I strongly doubt that when Dave Stevens created The Rocketeer he realised exactly what he was doing. I mean, he knew that he was creating a comic-book character that deliberately harked back to an earlier time, but there's no way he could have known that his character would become such a powerful icon, especially among other comic-book writers and artists: there's hardly a creator working today who doesn't look back at The Rocketeer with tremendous fondness.

Ah... I like constructing characters whose face can't be seen - it makes thing so much easier! Still, as I've said before, I don't find faces to be the hardest part of a model to build: hands are much trickier (and, yes, I do occasionally cheat and re-use the same hands!).

The Rocketeer's helmet came together very quickly, but the rocket-pack proved to be much more fiddly. I chose to use the design from the vastly underrated Rocketeer movie because it's cooler than the comic-book version, but I could find vey few good references photos: most of the photos on-line seem to be of fan-built versions, each with their own subtle differences. My version here is a best-guess attempt. Many of the smaller details (such as the rivets) are created with bump-mapping, which saves time not only in the modelling phase, but also in the rendering phase.

Created in 1950 by Frank Hampson to headline the new Eagle comic, Dan Dare is the kindly old grandfather of modern British comic-book characters.

I started by trying to create Dan in his spacesuit, but it just didn't seem a strong enough image, so I switched to his Space Fleet uniform instead. The trickiest part of this image was Dan's cap - it seemed to take forever to get it right.

The lead character of Sojourn from the ill-fated CrossGen stable of characters, Arwyn is not a particularly well-known character but I selected her because (a) I wanted to do an archer, (b) her costume posed a number of interesting challenges, and (c) because Arwyn manages to defy standard thermodynamic laws by being both hot and cool at the same time.

Keen-eyed archers will have already spotted that Arwyn's stance here is not quite right... Her left hand should be a lot closer to her face: as it is, she's about to fire the arrow way off to the right. But if I'd gone for accuracy then we wouldn't be able to see much of her face.

This is yet another model on which I went to an extreme level of detail, as seen here in this close-up of Arwyn's tunic (for clarity, I've disabled the leafy shadows for this image)...

Marvelman - or Miracleman, if you prefer - first appeared in the early 1950s when Len Miller's comic-book company needed a replacement to fill the gap when they were no longer able to reprint Captain Marvel (the story behind Marvelman is way, way too complex to go into here: my friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid has written an excellent book on the history of the character, Poisoned Chalice: The Extremely Long And Incredibly Complex Story of Marvelman, which is scheduled to be published shortly).

So. Marvelman was created (very possibly by Mick Anglo) and his comics sold in impressive numbers for quite a few years before disappearing into obscurity. Then along came Alan Moore in 1982, who revived the character for Warrior... And in doing so created what I consider to be the single most influential and important superhero story the comic-book world has ever seen.

For this model, I went back to Garry Leach's design for the first couple of issues of Warrior... It's been said that he based Marvelman's look on a young Paul Newman, so that's what I was aiming for.

Below: My illustration for a possible cover for Pádraig's book:

If you've ever enjoyed a graphic novel you owe a debt of thanks to Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit. The Spirit - setting aside memories of the recent movie - is one of the greatest comic-book characters to ever grace the four-colour pages.

This image was relatively simple to create, except for his hat, which still doesn't look quite right. The background street is adapted from my trailer for Super Human: I spent far too long creating that street to only use it once!

Razorjack is the title character from John Higgins' modern classic graphic novel, an other-worldly being who is the ultimate evil, the ultimate manipulator... If the character intrigues you, then by all means feel free to purchase a copy of my spin-off Razorjack novel Double-Crossing!

Above: I based the design of Razorjack's head on the full-size mask created by Nigel Booth. (The background to this image is by John Higgins himself, taken from his World Without End mini-series.)

Angelina diGriz, from Harry Harrison's wonderfully inventive Stainless Steel Rat novels... This is my CG interpretation of Carlos Ezquerra's version of the character from the adaptation that appeared in 2000 AD. More specifically, I based the design and pose on Carlos's pin-up of Angelina that appeared on the back of 2000 AD #173...

This all came about when a user on the 2000 AD message boards, The Legendary Shark, thought it would be a good idea if Carlos's fans created a one-off book specially for him, acknowledging his incredible work on 2000 AD (and many other comics). The final product is an amazing collection of artwork, comic-strips and daft jokes: Supersquirrel Undefeated!

Everyone loves Hellboy! And if they don't, that only means that they haven't read the comics. Or they have read them but didn't understand them.

I admit to cheating a little with this image, which I created in honour of Hellboy's 20th anniversary. I was going to model the entire figure but ran out of time so I opted for this above-the-waist shot instead. This means I didn't have to model Hellboy's distinguished right hand. Sorry!